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by Jane Houston
Friday, October 1st would have been a short night anyway, but made shorter by a family emergency which freed up one ticket and forced me to attend a local theatre group's staging of the musical Pal Joey, a Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart musical - one of their last collaborations. When my dad dropped me off at home, I quickly donned my observing clothes and drove 13 miles to the sleepy village of Lagunitas, nestled in the redwood forests of West Marin County, California. One of the other few members of theWest Marin Astronomers was holding a new scope test session out behind the Swing Cafe, our dark sky site. I went along to mooch some photons.
I arrived near midnight to find two new scopes set up: One a brand new liteweight 4 tubed reflector utilizing a marvelous13.1 Coulter mirror, and the other, a previously owned 3.1 inch F8 Celestron refractor my fellow observer picked up on a recent swing through the national parks of Nevada, Utah and Arizona. A ranger at one of the parks sold it with mount, solar filter, the works for $400.
It was late as I said, and my friend was already konked out in his sleeping bag, waiting for planets and the moon to rise higher. But I made plenty of noise, with my cashew chomping and astro atlas shuffling, and he woke up before I could swing the new13.1 inch scope towards NGC 7331, and the 3.1 inch scope towards the lovely double, Eta Cassiopeia, The Pink Buddy, I mean Pink Bunny.
Soon he was awake and showing me the new scope. Conditions were a little smokey from the mighty California fires to the north, south and east, but the seeing was spectacular for planet viewing. In the 3.1 refractor, the Galilean moons were clearly spherical - each one a different color disk, each disk a little more brighter or dimmer than the next. I was amazed to see such fine and exceptional detail for so little aperture. Jupiter's large white oval, festoons and small ovals between the NEB and SEB were clearly defined. I could barely tear myself away to take a peek at Saturn. The transparancy was pretty poor, and I knew it was not a night for any deep sky views, so I put away my Einstein's Cross star-field maps. That was my intended project through whichever scope my frind brought. But a nice dark site so few miles from home lured me to more planetary observing. We put the new scope through it's exercises, and took a look at the Veil Nebula, and then back to Jupiter.
I stayed pretty much glued to the small refractor and Jupiter. My friend, planning for a warm night was not dressed for the cold, and soon crawled back in his sleeping bag. I had had my fiill of mooched photons and drove home.
I had packed my short wave radio for the ride home and tuned to the BBC World Service on the shortwave. Incredibly, the show "Seeing Stars", hosted by Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest was on right then and they were interviewing our local professional Dr. Dan Werthimer, the SETI@Home manager. Following "Seeing Stars" and with the third quarter moon rising directly in front of me as I travelled east was the radio feature "Poems by Post", another of my BBC radio favorites.
A famous actress was reading Tennyson's poem, The Lady of Shalott. A poem which vividly depicts some of the King Arthur tales and characters. It reminded me of another Tennyson poem, Locksley Hall. This little part of it is why Tennyson is sometimes considered the poet-astronomer.
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.
It was a nice way to drive home from a short but successful two-person star party, with seeing stars filling all of my senses.